Day 4 – Horombo Hut to Kibo Hut

Day 4 – and it becomes more and more demanding. Another 1.000m are on today’s agenda and we all are starting to feel the altitude. We’re becoming more and more concentrated. While the first days had been filled with intense conversations day 4 became quieter the longer we had been walking. After 90 minutes we reached 4,000m no one of us had been at this altitude before. Well, except Steve who had been to Mount Kilimanjaro 11 times before – and summited every time successfully! It is indeed a great feeling to know that every step you’re doing is taking you even higher than you’ve ever been. Every single step…

Soon we’ve reached the “Last water point”. This is the last chance to fill up the water supplies as every drop of water that is needed later on has to be carried up from here. And water is certainly not the detail you’d like to be missing later on. We’re crossing the alpine desert, a vast and simultaneously silent region at an altitude of around 4,400m. Still 320m height meters to go to the next camp “Kibo Hut”, and almost 1,500m to the summit. At about two thirds of today’s climb we had our daily lunch break at a designated resting area where we enjoyed the culinary thrills our chef prepared for us in our lunch boxes.

In the afternoon we’ve reached Kibo Hut at 4,720m, stone cabins directly at the foot of the Kibo, the highest of the three of Kilimanjaro’s summits. Tight rooms for a very short night. At 7pm we met for dinner and tried to eat as much a possible, which is not that easy at altitude as your sense of hunger decreases significantly. Before going to bed we all arranged our equipment for the summit climb as the night is gonna be very short. But more about that later…